Is teams allowed?

Flatland Challenge
#1

Hello,

Is it possible to compete in this challenge as a team?
And how to make this?

Thanks

1 Like
#2

Hi Vitaly

Nice to have you on our challenge :slight_smile:.

Yes teams are allowed, please see ressources page for details.

Looking forward to your submissions.
Erik

#3

Hello Flatlanders,

I have a few questions regarding teams that do not appear to be answered in the resources page:

  1. Is there a maximum team size?
  2. Is private sharing of code and data outside of teams permitted?
  3. Are team mergers allowed?

Thank you,
Lewis

#4

Hi Lewis

  1. There is no maximum Team size for this competition. Read the rules to understand everything about the prizes as these will not be adapted to team size. (e.g. Travel grants not granted to all team members, prize awarded to team lead --> Distribution is up to your team leader)
  2. You can share your data outside of your team. We encourage to do so openly to foster collaboration and great advancements in this field of research. As long as there is no licencing or ip violation this is fine.
  3. You can merge your teams. There needs to be defined a new team lead and your old team submissions will be removed and not considered in the ranking. Get in touch with us if you want to merge a team.

Hope this answers all your questions.

Good luck and have fun :slight_smile:

#5

Hi Erik,

Thanks for the clarification!

Regarding question 2, what I had in mind was a scenario where individuals share code / data privately among themselves without forming an official team. This could lead to an unfair advantage because it partially bypasses the daily submission limit, i.e. individuals submit independently and only merge to form an offical team closer to the competition deadline.

This used to happen in early Kaggle competitions, which is why they now apply constraints on code / data sharing between individuals (sharing on the forums is considered fair and encouraged).

Could you please comment on how the organisers of this competition view / handle such behaviour?

#6

Hi @Iewtun

It is very difficult to detect if participants are exchanging information privately. If we detect that participants are using multiple accounts to bypass the submission limit, this is considered malicious activity and will lead to disqualification.

We therefore encourage you to openly exchange on the forums as well as share open source code such as observation builders and predictors for the challenge.

It is important to note that we will also be awarding the best community contribution. This is in the form of new observations, better predictors, or anything that helps the community evolve and achieve better results.

I hope this clarifies your question.

Best regards
Erik

#7

Thanks a lot for the answer Erik - that certainly clarifies the issue!